Brockton Bay's Gamer
by storybookknight
Summary: In a world of magic and martial arts, Han Jee-Han was The Gamer, a person of potentially unlimited magical talent. In Earth Bet, he's 'just' a parahuman. In Brockton Bay, he has the potential to change the course of events - though not necessarily for the better.
1. Ready Player 1

A/N: Sorry for anyone hoping for another update of The Butcher's Bill. I promise to get back to it eventually, but I keep having plot-bunnies for other stories. Here's one of them: a cross between Worm and The Gamer. (Which would have been done a month ago, but my writing time got eaten by Dragon Age: Inquisition. :P)

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><p>Wouldn't it be great if life was a game? If you could gain levels, assign points, and get stronger?<p>

I used to think that way.

Maybe that's why I'm seeing floating cursors over everyone's head. My name is Han Jee-han, Jee-han Han if you use the Western convention - "G", to my American friends.

And I'm a parahuman.

From where I'm sitting in my classroom, I can clearly see text floating over everyone's head, invisible to everyone but me. Each person has a 'level' that reflects how strong they are, which is followed by their name. It's like World of Warcraft, basically, except the majority of people here at Winslow High are just students and teachers, not Paladins or Warlocks, and so are stuck at a 'Level' representing combat effectiveness from somewhere between 1 to 4.

My gaze falls on one of the few exceptions to the rule, and the reason that I'm in this situation. My friend, Sun-il "Sunny" Shin. We've been friends since we were kids. He's a pretty good guy - and strong, too. His family runs a tae kwon do gym in the Docks, and he's managed to win a few tournaments. Maybe that's why the cursor above his head says **Chunbomoon's heir Lvl 12 Shin Sun-il.**

As strong as he is, though, he's nothing compared to a monster like Lung. Sun-il has been trying to steer clear of the Azn Bad Boys - he just wants to practice Tae Kwon Do, not get involved with gang business - but apparently he got unlucky or someone took exception to that notion because a few nights ago the ABB visited his family's house, with Lung front and center.

And because I've been friends with Sun-il for ages, I was there too. I had gone over to hang out and play video games, not to stare down a crazy Chinese gangster with metal skin and flames radiating off of him, scorching the paint on Sun-il's ceiling. That evil bastard told both of us that we were joining his gang, or else he'd come back and finish burning the place to the ground.

Honestly, if I hadn't been there, I would have been fine. The gangs are technically interested in everyone that they can recruit, of course, but realistically I don't have much to recommend me to the criminal element. I wasn't strong, I wasn't scary, I wasn't even friends with a lot of people that I could sell drugs to. My talent, insofar as I could be said to have one, was video games. I played all genres, but my favorite was RPGs. World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, Final Fantasy - there was something about exploring a fantastic world, starting from a humble beginning and eventually reaching the level of the divine, that really spoke to me. Not that it was a skill that was highly in demand, mind. No, when they showed up at Sun-il's house, it was him that they were looking for. I was just collateral damage.

We said we'd join, of course. It's not like we could really argue with someone who went toe-to-toe with the Endbringer that sank Kyushu. I still don't blame Sun-il for what happened; honestly, if it had happened to him when I wasn't there, I might have joined the ABB right after him just so he had someone to watch his back. He's like a brother to me, and that's a fact.

Anyways, after Lung and his posse left I just about had a nervous breakdown. Sun-il was swearing and punching the furniture, his parents were trying to calm down and calm him down too, and me? I just stared blankly at the television screen, the familiar figures of Dragon Quest, waiting for the world to make sense again. Eventually, I got up and staggered home. I couldn't fall asleep, so I popped in my careworn copy of Final Fantasy 7, wandering through Midgard until my heartbeat slowed down and my eyes were shutting of their own volition.

I didn't notice until the next day that something really quite strange had happened.

The first thing that I saw when I opened my eyes was a blue rectangle, like a status window from a game. I could faintly see my ceiling through it. In white letters, the message on it read: **You have rested in a bed. HP and MP are restored by 100%.**

'What the heck?' I thought, and I swatted at it until it went away, but my relief was short-lived. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the fateful words over my head.

**The Gamer Lvl 3 Han Jee-Han.**

The heck of it was, even upon seeing those words above my head, I was calm. The fact that I was completely calm should have unnerved me, but despite how weirded out I felt, I was still able to effortlessly keep my cool. Even upon seeing that my mother, Han Jung-Sook, had similar numbers above her head (though she was at level 6), I was still able to calmly eat breakfast without letting her know that anything was the matter, and start the walk to school. As soon as I did so, another blue window popped up.

**Quest received: The Morning Commute.**

**Make it to school on time.**

**Rewards: 100 xp. Maintain reputation with Winslow High.**

**Failure: Marked Tardy. Detention. Decreased reputation with Winslow High.**

**Accept? Y/N**

I stopped dead at the front door for a second seeing this, but eventually gathered my wits and stabbed "Y". The text box vanished, and I sighed, then walked out into the streets of Brockton Bay. My family lived in the Docks. Not the nicest part of town, but it was cheap, and we were close enough to school that it was easy enough to walk there.

Everywhere I went, I saw that the people walking or driving by had their name and level hovering over their head - most of them, like me, had a level somewhere between level one and five. I was starting to wonder if I was crazy. Well, there was one way to test that theory; steeling myself, I stopped a random person on the street that I had never met before. "Um, excuse me, sir? Can I ask you a favor?"

"Huh? Uh... what is it?" He looked a little bit nervous. Well, thinking back, it probably didn't help that on that particular morning I had decided to put on a red and green outfit. Lung had told Sun-il and me that we were part of the ABB, and I didn't want someone at Winslow to snitch on me and tell Lung that I wasn't cooperating. In any case, I gave him my most disarming smile.

"Sorry, I have this school project for social studies," I lied. "Would you mind telling me your first name?"

He looked a little confused. "Uh... Jason. Is that all?" I looked over his head. **Lvl 4 Jason Li.**

"Yeah, thanks. Have a nice day!" I turned and walked away. If it was a hallucination, it seemed to at least be an informative one.

With a little bit of hustling, I made it to school on time. I ran into Sun-il at the gate - he looked about how I felt, half-dead from exhaustion and stress. It was then that I first saw that he was Level 12. Four times as strong as me, huh? That was about right. As I passed through the front door, I got a pop-up message saying that I had received **100 xp** for my efforts. It was weird, but not as weird as what I saw when I was walking through the hallways of the school.

**Lvl 32 Sophia Hess.**

Sophia Hess, track star and raging bitch, was a more than twice as strong as Sun-il? That was what the text box over her head was telling me. I swallowed hard. Looking her up and down, I could see the tight muscles in her arms and legs (the subject of many a fellow student's fantasies), and, since I was looking for them, the calluses on her knuckles; so similar to the ones on Sun-il's fists. But no matter how in shape she was, there was no way that she had been trained in martial arts since she could walk. She had to be a cape. The Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB were out, so she was either a Merchant, an obscure independent cape, or a Ward. I'd never heard of her doing anything like selling drugs, so... A Ward? Was she Shadow Stalker?

I resolved right then and there not to tell a soul. Nobody unmasked capes without a really good reason, and anyone who did something like that would be a target for any cape group out there. Plus, if Sophia found out that I had unmasked her, I would probably get the same treatment as that Hebert girl.

Wait, was it really okay that one of the Wards was one of the school's worst bullies? I stared at Sophia dumbfounded for a second, only to notice that she had turned to stare back at me.

"What are you looking at, asshole?" Sophia - Shadow Stalker - glared at me, sneering as she saw that I was in ABB red and green.

"Nothing." I said, and headed into the school building.

Sun-il looked at me quizzically, but I was already being distracted by the message that had just popped up.

**Through continuous observation, a skill to find the target's information, Observe has been created.** I surreptitiously dismissed the status message as I walked past Sophia. On the plus side, I was starting to figure out that I probably wasn't crazy - or at least, not just crazy. On the minus side? I was a parahuman, and as of the day before I was in Lung's fucking gang. If Lung found out that I had powers, he'd probably throw me into fights against the Protectorate, or maybe the Empire Eighty-Eight. I'd have to keep them hidden.

So far, I'd been managing to do a pretty good job. I shook myself out of the reminiscence as Mr. Gladly walked in and began taking roll. Ever since last week when I woke up to these powers, I'd been quietly experimenting with them, trying to figure out what I could and couldn't get away with doing without anyone noticing.

According to what I had been reading on the Parahumans Online forums, my ability to see people's names and effective combat levels made me a "Thinker", someone whose powers gave them additional information on the world around them. On its own, it would have been a pretty useful power, if not anything particularly special. As I'd discovered, however, my powers seemed to do more than just that. Like a video game character, I seemed to be able to gain experience points. It seemed like I got them for every little thing - I had gotten the little notification for doing the dishes, for going for a jog, and for completing my homework. Just yesterday, I had finally gotten enough experience to "gain a level".

When the status window popped up, it had given me a list of attributes. It was like a character's statistic sheet, with Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Luck. Moreover, I had five points to distribute among them all, complete with little arrows on the right and left side. At the time, I had decided to test my powers by doing some before-and-after comparisons on Strength. I did a set of bicep curls with my dad's old weights, then assigned all five points into Strength. When I picked up up the weights again for a second set, I could feel that the resistance was noticeably less.

While it proved that my powers could affect my body as well (or at least that they could do something like release the limits on my muscles so that they could lift more) I was starting to regret having put everything into Strength. Could I have gotten smarter instead? It was the sort of thing that was more difficult to measure, but as useful as being stronger was, it was going to be a long time before I was physically strong enough to even think about taking on someone like Lung. If I were smarter, I could maybe have used that to figure a way out of the situation that I was in.

**Through careful deliberation, your WIS has gone up by one.**

I blinked as the message window popped up in front of my face. So, there were things like this too? Maybe it wasn't too bad that I wasted some points in Strength. I raised my hand and waved the status window away.

"Yes, Jee-Han?" Crap. Mr. Gladly had seen me move and assumed that I had a question.

"Uh, no. Just... swatting at a fly." I stammered. Curiously, I saw Taylor Hebert give me a weird look at that. She was another one of the few people I had noticed around the school who had levels higher than 5 or 6; she was actually **Lvl 16**. She didn't have a title in brackets like Sun-il or I did, though. Was that something that only happened with people that I knew well? Given how much she got picked on, it was hard to imagine that she was actually stronger than my friend Sun-il. Maybe she was secretly really smart, or something? Or getting picked on gave you extra levels? It seemed unlikely that she had a parahuman power. When I had used 'Observe' on her, all I had gotten was: **A student at Winslow High. The target of a campaign of discrimination and bullying that recently left her hospitalized.** My stomach churned as I thought about it - how'd she been found in a locker stuffed with bloody tampons and pads. Well, not like I could do much to help her right this minute - I had enough of my own problems to deal with.

"Right. Well, in any case... " He went back to his lecture on World Issues, going through the state of the world before the first capes had appeared. It was boring, so I tuned it out. What I wanted to do was to take a look at my stats, but the only time I had seen them was when I had leveled. On the other hand, a lot of games had menu screens... I decided to try it out.

"Menu," I whispered. Nothing.

Hmm. "Status." There we go. It seemed in addition to my stats, I had three abilities, two of which I'd never seen before: **Observe, Gamer's Mind** and **Gamer's Body**. It seemed that Gamer's Mind let me treat any circumstance calmly, as though it were a game, and Gamer's Body gave me the healing every night and let me ignore pain when I was damaged. So I had a Brute ability in addition to my Thinker ability? That would explain the ability to make myself stronger using points from leveling up. But, wasn't this ability a bit too broken? Sure, I was fairly weak now, but if I could somehow get myself to level 99... then again, I had to survive that long first.

There were parahumans dying every week in the news. Against something like an Endbringer, what would strength a little bit higher than human average do? Or the ability to see peoples' levels?

I looked up as the bell rung. While I had been examining my character status, the class had ended. "Sorry, guys, but there is homework for the weekend." Mr. Gladly said. "Think about capes and how they've impacted the world around you. Make a list if you want, but it's not mandatory. On Monday we'll break up into groups of four and see what group has the best list. I'll buy the winning group treats from the vending machine."

**Quest: Think about the impact of capes on the modern world. Accept? Y/N**

I touched 'yes' and sighed. Seriously? That was the kind of homework that he felt like he had to apologize for? As I put away my bags and turned to look at Sun-il, I saw him staring out into the hallway. I followed Sun-il's gaze and saw it - there was someone dressed in red and green waiting outside the door to the classroom. My eyes were drawn right to him, because there was a glowing question-mark over his head, to go with his name, **ABB Gangster Lvl 5 Andrew Takaya.**

As soon as the bell rang I walked up to him, Sun-il right behind me. "You looking for us?" I asked.

"You're Sunny and G-Han, right? There's a party tonight, 10 pm, corner of Fourth and Market. You've been personally invited to attend. Got it?"

I looked at Sun-il and back to the stranger in red and green. "I assume that our host doesn't really care if our parents refuse to let us out that late, huh?"

He snorted in disdain. "Do you want him to come by your house and convince your parents otherwise?" I blanched, and he seemed to take that as an answer. "Be seeing you. Oh, and - if I were you? I'd bring a weapon."

**Quest: Attend The ABB 'Party' - Get to the corner of Fourth and Market by 10 PM.**

**Optional: Party Favors - Arrive with a weapon equipped.**

**Accept? Y/N**

Despite the fact that I'd just been conscripted into some sort of parahuman gang war, my mind was still clear and calm as I watched him walk away. Sun-il, on the other hand, didn't have the benefit of my Gamer's Mind. "Fuck!" he shouted, punching a nearby locker hard enough to dent it. I surreptitiously tapped "Y" to clear the message screen away before walking over to him.

I put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, take it easy. We're still in school, you know."

Sun-il turned at me and glared. When he started speaking again it was in Korean; both of our families spoke Korean at home, and we had found it a handy way to speak privately in the past. "How am I supposed to take it easy? He as much as told us that we're going to be fighting someone tonight. What if we get hurt, or arrested?"

I nodded seriously. "Hurt or arrested is still better than being dead. That dragon-bastard" - I didn't really feel like using Lung's name where other people could be around to hear us - "goes after peoples' families if they don't join when he tells them to. You know the stories. Arrested is better than maimed and orphaned." It was a cold-blooded calculus, for sure, but if I had to indulge in dubiously legal activity in order to keep my parents safe I would.

He sagged. "Yeah. I guess I'll see you tonight, then?" He said, once more in English.

"Yeah. Actually, I haven't told my parents about all this yet. I don't want to worry them. Would it be okay if I stayed over at your place tomorrow night?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's fine. Come by whenever you like."

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><p>I practically ran home after school was over. If I was going to be getting into a fight later tonight, I needed to figure out some way of fighting first, and I had a thought as to how I might be able to do that. As usual, mom wasn't home yet when I got in. I left a note on the table to let her know that I would 'be at Sun-il's', and headed up to my room to dig in the closet. Sure enough, where I remembered it having been was an aluminum baseball bat. "Observe," I muttered under my breath.<p>

**An aluminum bat. Slightly lighter and stronger than a traditional baseball bat.**

That was another thing that I had found - apparently Observe worked on more than just people. Anything from ordinary objects to animals to people to plants could be analyzed by the Observe skill. I didn't really know what it was good for, but in any case by the time I had made it home, I had already gained a level in the skill. That was something that surprised me, a little bit. You didn't often hear of parahumans whose powers could get stronger over time. Lung was notable for being one of them - though he tended to get strong until the fight ended and then he powered down, rather than getting stronger on a permanent basis.

Then there was also this. "Inventory." I picked up the bat and slid it into a hole in midair. Somehow my powers were allowing me to store items in some sort of dimensional space. But why was this the case? Stat gain, inventory, hit points and mana points - all of these were things that worked in the rules of video games, but not in the case of real life. It was like I was altering physics in the area around me in order to make the world a little bit more like a game. There was a word for people with powers like that - Breakers. Probably the most famous Breaker was Legend, the public face of the Triumvirate. He could turn himself into a living laser.

Somehow becoming a video game character seemed lame in comparison.

Either way, now that I had my bat, it was time to do some grinding. I took a few minutes to walk to an abandoned part of the Docks and pulled my bat out of inventory. Taking a deep breath, I swung the bat against a lamp post.

WHONG. Though there was a ringing sound, and a vibration that sent a shockwave through the palms of my hands where they gripped the baseball bat and up my arms into my back, I managed to keep a hold on my weapon. I kept swinging the weapon at the pole with all my might, and sure enough I shortly thereafter got a pop-up message. **A skill has been created through a special action. A skill to deliver a strong blow, 'Power Strike' has been created.**

**Power Strike (Active) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Strikes the target with strong force.**

**15% increase in critical rate.**

**50% increase in attack damage.**

**Cost: 3 MP.**

**A skill to utilize blunt weapons freely, 'Blunt Weapons Mastery' has been created.**

**Blunt Weapon Mastery (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Allows user to freely handle blunt weapons.**

**10% increase in attack damage with blunt weapons.**

**5% increase in attack speed with blunt weapons.**

I had hoped that this might be the case. It seemed like my Thinker power extended into the realm of granting me additional proficiency with skills that I used a lot. That was great, but it was the 'Active' power called Power Strike that intrigued me more. When I activated it, my swings hit harder than the force my muscles had actually put into the blow. It seemed that I could actually break the laws of physics, slightly. It was only for a limited time, though, as about thirty strikes later I had exhausted my pool of 'Mana', and the skill fizzled. Well, the lack of an infinite mana bar was inconvenient, but I at least had a way to fight, and it wasn't even too noticeable!

I just hoped it would be enough.

I wound up having dinner at Sun-il's place. The atmosphere was heavy, almost like a thundercloud was hanging over the dining room table. "I'm so sorry son." Mr. Shin said. He was a white-haired man, but until now I had always seen him as a bastion of strength and fitness, the invincible head of Sun-il's dojang. Tonight he just looked old. "If I hadn't insisted on you taking up the family style..."

"Hey!" After a second, I realized it was me who had spoken up. "Sun-il loves martial arts. If he hadn't known them, he probably would have gotten trapped into joining the ABB last year, when the gangsters were going around the school."

Mrs. Shin looked at Sun-il. "You didn't tell us about that." It didn't sound like she was blaming him - honestly, it sounded like she was blaming herself.

He shrugged. "A couple of gangsters tried to pressure me into joining. I managed to get them to stop." I had been there. He had kicked one in the jaw and laid him out in two seconds flat, and the other three had fled.

Mr. Shin sighed heavily. "At least you weren't home, Sae-Young. At least with your cousin, I know all he'll be doing is fighting. If you had been here..." My stomach twisted as I heard him say it. I thought of Sae-Young as a big sister - she'd been staying with the Shin's ever since her parents died, so I'd run into her quite a lot over years of hanging out with her cousin Sun-il - and I'd had a little bit of crush on her since I was fourteen. Two years older than us, Sae-Young was just as athletic as her cousin, with a wide mouth, bleached hair, and almond eyes. I couldn't help but picture Lung deciding that he wanted to do ... things... to her, and my hands tightened around my fork and knife respectively.

"Oi, Jee-han. You're going to be watching my cousins's back, right?" Sae-Young asked, a serious expression on her face. I looked up from my plate to meet her gaze. "Come meet me in the dojang after dinner," she said. "Sae-Young-Noona here will show you a bit of the family art." She looked to her father, as if challenging him to say something, but her father just sighed and nodded.

"Don't wear him out too much," he said. "He still has to actually make it to that meeting."

I gulped.

After dinner Sae-Young and I moved downstairs to the gym. Despite my fears of just what 'training' could entail, Sae-Young was remarkably gentle as she helped my body move through a couple of positions. Really, we didn't actually have enough time for me to learn much of anything, but I think the 'training' was as much to make Sae-Young feel better as it was to accomplish anything actually useful.

Of course, that was what I was thinking before taking into account my Gamer powers.

**A skill to fight while unarmed, 'Basic Martial Arts' has been created.**

**Basic Martial Arts (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Allows user to fight while unarmed.**

**10% increase in damage while unarmed.**

**5% increase in attack speed while unarmed.**

**A skill granting advanced unarmed combat techniques, 'Chunbomoon-Style Taekyeon' has been created.**

**Chunbomoon-Style Taekyon (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Allows user to make attacks using the Taekyeon unarmed style.**

**10% increase in damage while using Taekyeon.**

**10% increase in attack speed while using Taekyeon.**

**A skill granting enhanced movement, 'Chunbomoon Foot Technique' has been created.**

**Chunbomoon Foot Technique (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Passively increases speed by 5%.**

**10% increase in defense while in a Taekyeon stance.**

I could feel my punches striking much more quickly and confidently as I flowed through the motions behind Sae-Young. After a little bit, she paused. "Hey, you're actually picking this up pretty quickly. I didn't think you'd had any training in martial arts before."

I froze for a second, then kept going. "I haven't. Maybe I'm just naturally talented?" I didn't want to tell her that I was a parahuman. Maybe I'd tell her someday, but for now I was afraid that if I told any of Sun-il's family about it, they'd expect me to use my powers to do something against Lung. It's not like I wasn't going to try, but I didn't think that I realistically had any hope of success. Lung was an end-boss, and I hadn't even walked into the first dungeon yet. Trying to fight him would just wind up in a cut-scene battle where the hero lost miserably.

She looked at me speculatively. "You know, you should think about joining the dojang."

"Sure, if I survive working for Lung." I replied flippantly without thinking about it. It kind of killed the mood. Sae-Young turned and leaned on the padded wall of the practice hall, intermittently smacking her head into it with muffled thunks.

"You better come back safe," she growled. "And bring my cousin back safe with you, got it?"

I answered with a solemn nod. "I will."

Thankfully the moment was interrupted by Sun-il walking downstairs into the dojang before it could get too awkward. "We should probably get going, Jee-han. Did you bring a weapon?"

My eyes widened for a second. It wasn't like I could just pull my bat out of my inventory right there in front of them. "Ah, one second," I said. Luckily, there was a corridor outside of the gym area leading to the front door. I whispered "Inventory" as I went out of the room, and came back with the aluminum bat. "This should be okay, right?"

Sun-il looked back and forth from me to his cousin and eventually shrugged. "Yeah. It's not like you really know how to use a more dangerous weapon even if we gave you one."

I frowned. "I'm not really planning on hurting anybody tonight if I can help it. What about you?" I asked my friend. "Are you bringing a weapon?"

He raised his fists. "I'm bringing two."

WHAP! His cousin smacked him upside his head, and I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. "At least bring one of the wooden training swords, dumbass." She said. "Pure hand-to-hand isn't going to do you any good against a parahuman."

He rolled his eyes, but walked over to a closet and pulled out a wooden sword in a black canvas carrying case. "Happy?"

"No." There was a long silence, broken only when she sniffed. Sae-Young grabbed her brother into a tight hug. "Come back safe, understand?"

"Yeah. Got it." He hugged her back. I did my best to turn away and give them some space, feeling oddly like an intruder despite the fact that I considered Sun-il family.

I gave Sae-Young a solemn nod, and Sun-il and I headed out into the streets of Brockton Bay.

His parents watched us from the upstairs window until we were out of sight.

* * *

><p>It didn't take us long to find the meeting place. It was an unremarkable warehouse a few blocks away from the waterline, marked by an unobtrusive red paper lantern hanging from the side of one of the doors. I looked around, but there didn't seem to be anyone standing on the street corner waiting for us. "Guess it's too much to hope that the meeting is canceled, huh?" Sun-il asked rhetorically.<p>

"I guess we should knock?" I said. I took a deep breath, then knocked on the door next to the lantern. It opened almost immediately to reveal a man with a soul patch and a thin mustache, scowling at us through the space between door and frame. My power helpfully informed me that he was** ABB Bouncer Lvl 6 Wei Zhang.**

"What do you want?" Wei asked us, a sneer on his face. I had the sudden, incongruous mental image of a dialogue wheel popping up and giving me conversation options, and would have broken down laughing if not for my Gamer's Mind.

I motioned to our red-and-green clothing and to the bat that I was holding on one shoulder. "Andrew Takaya told us we were invited to a 'party'. You gonna let us in?"

After a second, he opened the door and stepped back. From inside I could hear the dim sound of club music, and the air smelled like tobacco and pot. I steeled myself and took the first step in, noticing that my eyes adjusted much more quickly than I was used to. At first glance the warehouse was fairly ordinary-looking; plain cement floors, harsh fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. Some effort had been made to make the area more palatable, though - most of the overhead lights were turned off, leaving the area dimly lit, and cheap christmas lights had been strung up around some of the support posts to lend the area a festive air. The center of the warehouse space was dominated by several green-felted tables, the sort that you might see in a cheap casino. Surprisingly, most were devoted to more traditionally western games - Blackjack, craps, poker, stuff like that - rather than the mahjongg or cho-han I had naively been expecting, though I did see a mahjongg table off to the side. Almost everyone was smoking something, though not everyone was smoking tobacco. Luckily, the ceilings were high enough that the smoke just created a thin haze near the roof, rather than choking our lungs. To one side was a 'bar' area, a simple plastic table with some plastic coolers under it that were filled with ice and probably-stolen beer.

Overseeing the whole affair was Lung. A raised dais had been made from some of the shelving units left behind in the warehouse; he was sitting on top of that in what looked like a reclining armchair, watching the proceedings with a bored eye and what looked like an ivory pipe. It was calculated, clearly designed to impress. It was working. As I looked up I noticed Lung's gaze turn in my direction. He looked at us for a second, then beckoned.

I looked back at Sun-il and Wei. Wei gave us a brush-off motion with his hand, as if to say 'yes, he means you', then sat back down to guard the door, picking up what looked like a skin magazine as he did.

Sun-il and I looked at each other in one of those wordless glances that you only get between friends who have known each other a long time, then headed towards Lung, shoulder to shoulder. A few of the people gambling at the tables gave us curious glances, but we apparently weren't interesting enough to warrant full-on stares. As we got closer to Lung, I saw that there were other people wearing ABB colors loitering around the place, leaning against walls and sitting on folding chairs. They looked at us with either smirks of derision, or the occasional look of pity. Unlike the gamblers, they had little else to hold their attention, and so they kept watching us as we approached the raised dais.

"You're here. Smart." Those were the first words that Lung said to us. He took an affected pull on his pipe, blowing a cloud of harsh-scented smoke into our faces. I somehow managed not to cough. "If you had made me ask again, I would have been less kind." With that, he threw a pair of scraps of white cloth at us. "Put these around your arms. They show you're new. Someone without one of these tells you to do something, you obey. You can take them off when you're blooded." He paused, looking us up and down to see our reactions. "For now, you're on guard. If you have questions, ask someone else."

And with that, he turned away from us. We were that far beneath his notice. Peeking above his head, all I could see was **ABB Leader Lvl ? Lung. **If this were a game, that would effectively mean that his power was so far above mine that I couldn't even judge it effectively. As Sun-il and I backed away, a status message popped up in the air in front of me.

**Attend the ABB 'Party' Complete.**

**Reward: 500 xp. Level Up!**

**Reward: ABB Initiate Title ( +1 to diplomacy with ABB affiliates ) available.**

**Quest: Guard the ABB Gambling Hall - Guard the ABB Gambling Hall against intruders.**

**Accept? Y/N**

Absentmindedly I reached out to touch 'Y'. Sun-il gave me a strange look, and I shrugged. "Thought I saw someone else I knew," I said. I was starting to feel awkward about lying to Sun-il. I resolved to tell him everything just as soon as we got to a place where our status within the ABB was a bit more stable. As Sun-il and I walked over to where the rest of the 'guards' were, I began to see exclamation marks appear over the heads of the other ABB members. No doubt they were out to give Sun-il and I some suitably 'newbie' and embarrassing tasks.

They probably would have, too, except for the blood-chilling howl that echoed through the warehouse, too deep to have come from the throat of any ordinary dog.

I looked up, and the skylight shattered.


	2. Cutscene Villainy

A/N: Time for another chapter! We have some character building, a little bit of exposition, and some foreshadowing for next chapter.

While I got a lot of inspiration for the way Jee-han and Sun-il interact in this chapter from the manwha, because they're much closer in power and experience to each other now I am also borrowing a lot from the way that Kenichi and Naruto act as "Brothers in Dumb" in Kenchi618's History's Strongest Shinobi. He's sufficiently well known that he probably doesn't need my recommendation, but if for some reason you haven't heard of him, I do recommend checking him out.

Chapters inspired by one of my other favorite authors, gabriel_blessing, will probably have to wait until this story develops a few more potential love interests.

In the meanwhile, please feel free to shoot me a PM or leave me a review if you have a good idea for what Jee-han's cape name should be!

* * *

><p>There must be something seriously wrong with the way my mind works, because when I saw a pack of 1-ton beasts come through the ceiling in a shower of broken glass, my first thought was - <em>Oh, crap. A cutscene!<em>

In many modern games, immediately after a startling event, like a zombie bursting through a door, or (more pertinently) a monster falling from the ceiling, there will be a prompt to press a button or a series of buttons quickly - a 'quick time event' - in order to avoid massive damage or a game over flag. Often, novice players will be so frozen with fear that they will miss the button press, and have to go back to a previous save. In real life, of course, there is no option to save and reload. If I had been someone like that, a normal person with normal reactions to surprises, I likely would have wound up underneath the falling monsters, squished by their massive bulk.

Thanks to my Gamer's Mind, however, I was rolling awkwardly to the side before the beasts were even halfway to the floor. Thousands of pounds of muscle and bone hit the ground where I had just been, landing with a series of heavy thuds. Meanwhile, in front of my face, a notification popped up.

**A skill to move agilely and freely, 'Acrobatics' has been created.**

**Acrobatics (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Allows user to perform maneuvers such as rolls, cartwheels, and flips, though successfully completing the maneuver is not guaranteed.**

**5% additional chance of success with acrobatic maneuvers.**

**Success rate increases with additional DEX.**

I scowled at the message. Now was not the time for menu screens! I dismissed it just in time to get a quick look at the _things _that had come in through the roof. They were each roughly the size of a small car, looking vaguely like giant wolves or dogs, but with odd spurs of bone or scales peeking out from between patches in their fur. As I watched, they began growing larger, swelling up as their fur split at the seams, looking less and less canine with every moment. They howled and barked at the sensations, the basso rumble of their voices shaking the air like the sound system at a horror movie. Punctuating their growls were the panicked and angry shouts of the ABB as gangsters scrambled for cover and for weapons.

All three beasts had riders, with the biggest beast carrying two people, but I only had about enough time to notice that their costumes were black, brown, white, and purple before the purple rider shouted "Grue! Get the room!"

Almost immediately, the room went dark. I had just enough time to see an smoky cloud spreading outwards from the black-leathered rider, rippling through the air like ink in a glass of water. As the darkness enveloped me, the howls and shouts faded; something about Grue's powers was swallowing up sound, too, not just light. As if from far away, I heard the report of what sounded like a bullet, and swore. Luckily, I had at least a small idea of where Sun-il had been standing when the lights went out; I was able to fumble my way over to him and drag him down to the ground. It was a near thing, for a second - I felt him stiffen in a way that made me sure that he was about to use a Taekyeon-style throw on me (or some other 'counter' to my trying to get him out of the line of gunfire), but after a second he must have realized who I was, because he sank down to the floor with me.

That was how I spent my first parahuman fight. Not trading blows with a juggernaut, not dodging lasers or jumping on top of moving vehicles, but huddled on the floor, praying I wouldn't be hit by a stray bullet or stepped on. At one point in the fight, Sun-il and I felt a bloom of heat on our faces, and we scrambled back, trying to stay out of Lung's way as he did whatever he was doing, I assumed probably chasing the intruders. It was a far cry from what I had imagined cape life to be like even a few months ago.

After a few minutes, the darkness suddenly evaporated. Immediately in front of my eyes was the status window.

**Quest: Guard the ABB Gambling Hall - Failed!**

**Failure Reward: 0 xp.**

**Quest: Survive the Undersiders' Raid - Complete!**

**Reward: 800 xp.**

**Optional Quest: Lick Your Wounds - Treat the wounds of your fellow ABB members.**

**Optional Quest: Flee The Scene - Escape before the commotion draws the police.**

I really had to find a way to turn that thing off... or at least minimize it. I managed to dismiss it surreptitiously this time by covering the motion with the act of getting to my feet, but eventually someone was bound to notice that I kept tapping on a menu that only I could see. Once I was on my feet, I was able to take stock of the situation. True to my power's suggestions, there were a couple of people lying on the ground and moaning in pain who had not been as fortunate with staying out of the way of the fight, and the giant dog-things had torn an enormous hole in one of the steel warehouse doors in their escape. Aside from the noise it probably made, there was no way that the police wouldn't notice something like that when they investigated the area.

The problem was, Lung was nowhere in the area to be seen. He must have chased the Undersiders out of the building, but in the meantime, nobody had any orders to do anything, which meant that people were generally standing around in confusion or talking to each other.

"Jee-han, you okay?" I turned around to see Sun-il dusting himself off.

I nodded distractedly, still looking around the room. "Yeah, you?"

"Yeah. Thanks for the save earlier." He sighed, a look of nervous exhaustion written plainly on his face.

I met his expression with a grim one. "Looks like not everyone was as smart about ducking." I indicated the wounded people around the room. To be honest, I hesitated for a second before suggesting that we go and help them. There was a good chance that staying to clean up would keep us from escaping the police, and really, why should I care if someone dumb enough to join the ABB got hurt?

But, who's to say that they hadn't been conscripted just like us? Or even if they had joined willingly, what if they had needed the money and the ABB were the only ones hiring? What if they had joined to back up a friend? And even if they were just thugs, what if they were the father, or the brother, or the son of someone we knew? I hadn't magically started liking the ABB now that I was a member, but I sure didn't think they deserved to die... and I didn't like how still the guy on the floor over there was laying. "Sun-il, you know any first aid?" I asked, walking quickly over towards the guy on the floor.

"Uh, a little? Why?" He looked up to see me already walking away, and jogged a bit to catch up. "Oh. Yeah." He reached down to grab the guy's wrist, holding his fingers there for a few seconds. "Shit, I can't feel anything."

I probably would have panicked, if I were still normal. Instead, I whispered "Observe". His cursor still said **ABB Member Michael Lin Lvl 4** instead of something like **Corpse**, so I assumed he was probably alive. "Isn't it hard to get a pulse at the wrist? Try his neck, or maybe see if he's breathing?"

Sun-il let out a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah, thanks. I'd forgotten that." He put one hand to Michael's - I was having trouble thinking of him as just 'the unconscious guy' now that I knew his name - neck and put the other one in front of his mouth. After a moment, he nodded. "Yeah, you were right. He's just knocked out."

"Leave him there." From behind us, we heard the accented growl of Lung's voice. I hadn't heard him walk up behind us at all, and from Sun-il's expression, he was just as startled as I was. "You two. Did you tell the Undersiders to strike here, tonight?" It seemed that Lung had calmed down slightly, as he was only maybe six inches taller than normal, with a faint metallic sheen to his flesh, and an aura of heat around him like being next to a weak campfire.

I looked up into the tattooed face aghast for a split second, then quickly shook my head, panicked. "Are you kidding me?" I asked. "One of those dogs nearly landed on me! If I had even known them to tell them where to go, do you think I'd have been standing under the skylight when they got here? Or stuck around once they left?"

He looked down at me for a long second. "No, you would not have." I had a split second of blinding relief before he punched me in the face. I tumbled and rolled, hearing Sun-il shout wordlessly in protest as my body met the cement. "Next time, make sure he answers with respect," I heard him say to Sun-il. After a second, I realized that it didn't really hurt, that aside from the brief flash of pain to let me know that I had been injured, I was completely fine.

"Fuck." I said it out loud - it seemed appropriate, after all. Of course, I wasn't swearing from the pain; I was swearing because of my stupid "Gamer's Body" power. It probably wouldn't show any damage at all from the hit - I'd be found out for sure if that was the case! I didn't even know how much damage I had taken - without time to look at my Status window, I wouldn't even know how many hit points I'd lost.

**A skill has been created through a special action. Through the power of your body to endure pain and damage, "Physical Endurance" has been created.**

**Physical Endurance Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**The body's endurance increases and you take less damage. 3% decrease in damage from physical attacks.**

**Damage is further reduced with additional CON.**

Why do I always get the status windows when I should be focusing on not getting killed? "Status." One whispered word showed me the damage - from my new level of 5, I was at 117 out of 160 hit points. Lung had done forty-three damage - or over a quarter of my total health - to me with a casual backhand, and that wasn't even at his full power. After a hit like that, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and just laid there while Lung barked orders at his lieutenants to get everything out of the warehouse as fast as possible.

About a minute later, I felt Sun-il bending down over me. "Jesus, Jee-han. How bad is it? Can you stand up?"

I nodded and scrambled up to my feet, using his body for support. "It's not as bad as it looked," I muttered into his ear, "I used one of the moves your sister showed me to roll with it."

"Good. Listen, we gotta go." I kept one hand pressed to my face to hide the fact that I wasn't physically injured, and nodded. I could hear the sirens getting closer. He looked around. "Where'd you leave your bat?"

It was in my inventory, but it wasn't like I could show it to him. "Forget about it, there's no time."

He nodded, and we ran out into the night. Funny thing - I hadn't exactly gotten much faster, with the new powers, but just like most video game characters never got tired, neither did I. I was able to keep up a running pace more than long enough to get out of the warehouse and safely into the streets of the Docks.

**Lick Your Wounds - Complete!**

**Rewards: +1 Reputation with ABB. 150 xp.**

**Flee The Scene - Complete!**

**Rewards: 200 xp. Level up!**

A few minutes later, Sun-il stopped for breath under a convenient streetlight, far enough away from the warehouse to avoid any sort of legal trouble. "Damn, Jee-han, you've been working out! You aren't even breathing hard! Come on, let me see your face."

I took a deep breath, then removed my hand. Jee-han knew me too well. I could keep trying to come up with excuses for my oddities, and ways to hide them, but eventually he would realize that there was something strange going on. More than that, though, I was sick of lying to someone I trusted. I let the streetlight shine openly on my face, giving him a good look at the unmarred and unbruised skin.

His eyes widened as he examined my cheek. "What? Doesn't look too bad, you might have some bruises?... I think...?" He raised his hand toward my face, poking at it. "Does this hurt?"

I pushed his hand away gently, meeting his eyes with a serious gaze. "No, it doesn't hurt."

His eyes narrowed. "Jee-han? What..."

"I have a confession to make." I reached my hand out into the air, and said "Inventory," then pulled the baseball bat out of thin air. "Sun-il, you are currently looking at the proud owner of the weirdest parahuman power in Brockton Bay."

* * *

><p>It was half an hour later that I finally finished telling my best friend everything that had happened to me in the last week. The peoples' names floating over their head, the obnoxious status messages, even what I knew about Shadow Stalker, though I just told Sun-il that I thought I had accidentally unmasked <em>a<em> cape at our school, rather than telling him which cape I had identified, or who from our school I thought it was. Sun-il pouted a little bit at that, but he understood my reasoning. He couldn't accidentally give away anything he didn't know, after all.

"So what's your cape name?" he finally asked me.

I blinked. I hadn't even thought about that yet. "I ... have no idea. Something video game themed, maybe?"

"Yeah, that makes sense. You'd have to watch out for Uber and Leet, though."

"Oh man, I hadn't even thought about them yet. Christ. What would they do if they found out I was someone with a video game themed power..."

"Invite you to join them?"

"If I was lucky."

"Well, if they didn't... it is just Uber and Leet we're talking about."

"True." I snorted at the thought of the geeky supervillains, and we passed a few seconds in a companionable silence.

"So, something game related, and maybe something that starts with G, for 'G' Han?" He said. "Hmm. Grinder?"

"You want me to name myself after a sandwich." I deadpanned.

"Yes!" He gave me a cheeky grin, which didn't fade when I punched him lightly in the arm. "Okay, okay, no. What about RPG? That's a weapon."

I thought about it for a second. "Maybe? It sounds a little bit too military. We don't have to stick with G, though. What about Quest?" I asked.

"Ooh, that's a pretty good one. Probably means it's already taken, though."

I sighed in agreement. "A lot of the good names are. I've been reading PHO a lot lately, and you wouldn't believe the stupid names some heroes get stuck with..."

Sun-il snickered. "Parahumans Online, right? For a second there I thought you were talking about soup."

Almost on cue, my stomach growled. "Oh man, I could totally go for a bowl of pho bo right now. I am _starving_."

Sun-il stood up, and held out a hand to me. "Well, I can't cook Vietnamese food for the life of me -"

"You can't cook any food for the life of you-" I interrupted, taking his hand and letting myself be hoisted to my feet.

"-True-" he agreed, "- but there's some bread, peanut butter, and jelly in the cupboards at home with our name on it."

"Sold!" My heart was lighter than it had been all week as we walked back towards Sun-il's house. I mean, all of the arguing about cape names was completely pointless - it wasn't as if I had any intention of joining the ABB as a cape, and I couldn't exactly join the Protectorate without Lung showing up to burn my house down - but the pointlessness was kind of the point. The last time I had been able to relax and talk about nonsense with my best friend was over a week ago, and apparently just because my Gamer's Mind kept me calm, that didn't mean that it kept me from getting lonely.

"That is so weird." He said, looking down at my feet as we walked.

"What?"

"You're using the Chunbomoon foot technique right now. I can tell by the way you're walking."

I looked down, then shrugged. "Huh? Yeah, I suppose I am. I decided to keep doing it because it passively increases my speed, and so I can level it up." Speaking of which, I decided to check on it. "Status."

"Even I can't just do it all the time without thinking about it. That's pretty cool." He shrugged and decided to match me, stepping in the peculiar gliding motion that I was currently using. Sun-il peered at the air in front of me as I started paging over to the skills tab. "That's your menu screen thingy? I don't see anything."

"Yeah, I kind of figured that much. It's really obnoxious how often things pop up in front of me. If people could see them, I'd be in trouble. Ah, here it is." I scrolled through the list of skills until I got to the one I wanted.

**Chunbomoon Foot Technique (Passive) Lvl 1 85.4%:**

**Passively increases speed by 5%.**

**10% increase in defense in a Taekyeon stance.**

"Wow!" I said, "I've nearly leveled it up once already. It must be because I've been grinding it..."

"Ah, so it's like in one of those games where you have experience for individual skills as well of your health?"

"Yeah, Elder Scrolls was always one of my favorite series..." I started to agree absent-mindedly, then stopped. "That reminds me, I need to assign my stat points."

"Stat points? Oh yeah, you mentioned you raised your strength, earlier. Are you going to do something like that again?"

I frowned. "I don't think so. The thing is, right now I have two problems. First off, I have a limited number of points to allocate." I started paging back through the menu, heading for the character screen. It was a pretty intuitive interface, which I supposed made sense, given that the power was probably coming from somewhere in my subconscious. "If I just generally raise things so that each attribute is a little bit higher than normal, I might wind up becoming a trash character."

Sun-il snickered, elbowing me in the ribs. "That's true in games... do you really think it's still true in real life? You're such a nerd!"

I glared at him and tried to elbow him back, but he did one of those annoying foot-dodgy things he always does, and slipped out of reach. "Secondly, if I raise any of my abilities too high, I might start outing myself as a parahuman. So, I'm thinking about maybe just not assigning any points right now, and waiting until I pick a focus."

He looked like he was thinking about that for a second until it clicked. "Oh, like whether you want to be a fighter or a wizard, that sort of thing?"

"Yeah. I don't know if wizard is even an option yet! If it turns out that it is, and I wasted all of my points buffing strength, I'm going to be really upset, because -"

Sun-il interrupted, doing his best to match my voice "- because I always play mages!"

"Yeah. That." I rolled my eyes at him, but secretly I was a little bit happy that Sun-il was making fun of me like normal. I had been afraid that he would resent me, or be in awe of me, or something like that - though frankly, right at the moment I could use a little bit more awe.

"How do you not know if wizard is an option? Is there not a character tree? No mouseover text? I figured the great Han Jee-Han would never fall so low as to need a wiki to know how to optimize a character." He stuck his tongue out at me and I sighed.

"If only. My menu started out showing three tabs: **Character, Inventory, and Skills. **A little while ago, I leveled up and tabs for **Specializations **and **Recipes** showed up, but they're greyed out. I'm hoping that once I get access to whatever **Specializations **are, I'll know a little bit more about where I should put my points." I stared at my menu screen thoughtfully for a few more seconds, then dismissed it.

"Specializations, huh?" Sun-il asked. "That doesn't sound particularly game-like. Recipes is self-explanatory, though it seems like it might be a little bit bullshit. I mean really? You might develop Tinker powers too?" He raised his eyebrow at me.

I shrugged. "Maybe? When I touched the **Specializations** tab, I just got this message about being able to develop specializations by encountering other parahumans, or something like that. It could be like a job system, or a class tree... I really don't know yet. And **Recipes** just told me that I didn't know any recipes yet." As we walked around the final corner to the street Sun-il's house was on, I noticed he was looking at me strangely. "What?"

After a second, he asked "...Are you putting that weird emphasis on those words deliberately?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"...Never mind." He opened his front door with the key. It was late - after eleven, given just how long we had been walking and talking after escaping from the warehouse. _"We're home,"_ he called up the stairs softly. I hadn't been sure that anyone would still be awake, but Sae-Young was heading down the stairs to meet us by the time we had gotten our shoes off.

I felt my face flush. She was dressed for bed, with pajama pants and a tiny camisole top that let me see far more of her skin than I was entirely used to seeing. I turned my gaze to the side quickly, hoping that Sun-il hadn't caught me perving on his cousin. Luckily, it seemed like he was preoccupied by her checking his face and arms over for injuries. "Thank god, you're all right. Are you all right? Tell me you're all right."

He did his best to fend her off. "I'm fine. We're both fine."

She sagged. "Thank god." Then she lashed out like a striking serpent, brutally punching her cousin in the shoulder. "Why the FUCK didn't you call and let us know? We heard the sirens, and saw the fire, and we were just _sure_ it was Lung, and then we don't hear from you for another hour? "

I winced. That... was a really good point. Also, that had been a really good hit. I had heard it from five feet away. "It's not his fault! He was taking care of me!"

Sae-Young's expression changed in a flash. As she got closer to check on me, I could see that there were tears gathering in her eyes. "Shit! What happened? Are you okay?"

There was a second where all I could think of was how soft her lips looked, but then I took a deep breath and felt the calm of the Gamer's Mind washing over me. "Yeah, I'm fine. I, uh, kind of got punched by Lung, but it just knocked the wind out of me." I said, much more collected than I had felt a few moments earlier.

**A skill to deceive others, 'Lie' has been created. **

**Lie (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:**

**Increases chance of deceiving others in conversation by a variable amount depending on the difficulty of the attempted deception.**

**Success rate is increased with additional WIS.**

Why did everything have to be a skill? I didn't want a shady skill like this!

Meanwhile, Sae-Young's expression went from shocked to instantly concerned. "Oh, shit." She paused for a second, looking me up and down, and seeing that I wasn't obviously bruised or limping. "You're okay, though?" When I nodded, she socked me in the arm too, though not nearly as hard as when she had hit Sun-il. "Then you still should have called. Dumbass." She scowled and stomped her way back up the stairs, muttering under her breath about "stupid idiots... don't know why I worry... frickin' picking a fight with frickin' Lung..."

Sun-il and I looked at each other. Eventually, he sighed. "Come on. I should probably go get the same treatment from my parents."

"We totally should have called."

"Yup."

As tired as everyone was, though, we didn't get scolded too badly before we had to get to bed. It was a school night, after all.

* * *

><p><strong>You have rested on a couch, but not for nearly long enough. HP and MP are restored by 33%.<strong>

_Great,_ I thought, _now the status messages are editorializing. It's going to be a long day._

Luckily, between my 4 hp/minute regeneration and the fact that I had slept, my injury from the previous day was completely gone. That was its' own problem, of course - people would be expecting to see bruises on my face. I debated trying to borrow some of Sae-Young's mascara to fake a bruise, but I decided that it was too risky. If I accidentally touched my face and smeared the disguise, it would make people wonder why I had tried to fake an injury in the first place. Instead I just decided on a much simpler expedient - skipping school. After a day or two, nobody would think it was too unusual that I wasn't visibly injured.

It took a little bit of persuading, but after a bit, Sun-il's parents agreed to cover for me and tell both the school and my mother that I was feeling unwell. In exchange, though, they made me promise to hurry up and tell my mother about the ABB soon. And I would. I had intended to. Really.

But for right now, there was something more important than having a long and involved argument with my mother - I needed to get stronger. Last night had shown me that I was totally unprepared for a real fight. I needed more skills, and I needed practice using them, and since I was a RPG character, that meant exactly one thing.

Grinding.

It seemed like the only way I could improve my skills was by using them, and for a lot of them, doing it in front of people would be too suspicious - either because I was learning so quickly, or because I kept doing things like shouting "Power Strike!" over and over again.

So after breakfast, I said good-bye to Sun-il as he headed off to Winslow, and took a left turn to head further towards the shoreline, to the 'bad part' of the Docks. Living next to a disaster area had its perks. Sure, you could go a few blocks and see buildings without power or even power lines, but really, couldn't you just think of them as galleries for graffiti - excuse me, urban art? The roads were full of potholes and the sidewalks full of grass-choked cracks, but those were just urban micro-parks, full of ponds and greenery! Half the residential buildings had been foreclosed upon and most of the factories were closed, but hey. That just meant real estate was cheap!

Yeah, the Docks was kind of a pit.

The thing about terrible parts of town, though, was that it was easy to find an empty building in them. I didn't have to go far before my **Observe** skill told me that a particularly dilapidated warehouse was **Occupancy: 0**.

After I pried up the boards covering one of the windows and slipped inside, I could see why. There were massive holes in the roof, which had left the area open to the elements. The cement floors were covered in places with bird crap, and in other places weeds and blades of grass had worked their way into cracks in the floor. The air was hazy with dust and pollen, catching the rays of sunlight falling through the holes in the roof.

It was like a grungier, bombed-out version of Aerith's Sector 5 Church, and I fell in love with it immediately.

I took a few minutes to clear out a space in the middle of the floor of debris, and then I started grinding.

I punched, I kicked, I tumbled, I rolled. I swung my bat at phantom opponents, and shouted 'Power Strike' as I swung at the support girders holding up the remains of the ceiling. Part of me wondered if I looked like I was in a martial arts montage, with the patterns of light and shadow moving across the floor as I performed martial arts moves in an abandoned warehouse.

The other part was pretty sure I looked like a moron.

Either way, by the time that the alarm on my phone beeped to let me know that it was time to get back home before my mother noticed I was gone, I had made an acceptable amount of progress in quite a few of my skills.

**Basic Martial Arts has reached Lvl 6!**

**Chunbomoon-Style Taekyeon has reached Lvl 3!**

**Chunbomoon Foot Technique has reached Lvl 4!**

**Blunt Weapon Mastery has reached Lvl 4!**

**Acrobatics has reached Lvl 2!**

**Power Strike has reached Lvl 3!**

Not bad for a morning's work. It was interesting to note that I never seemed to get exhausted with all of the running and jumping around that I was doing, and even though I was performing the same basic and boring actions over and over, I never seemed to get bored.

In fact, I didn't start feeling truly _tired_ from any of the running around I was doing until I started spending MP on Power Strike. Even then, my energy came back just as fast as my MP did - at 0.8 MP per second.

The running around and everything did have some effect, though - several times I got a status message saying that my **VIT had increased by 1. **

The more I thought about these Gamer's Mind and Gamer's Body powers, the more I came to realize that they were actually really good!

It was just too bad that having them meant that I was a parahuman in a town where Asian parahumans didn't have the option of not joining a villain gang.

I took a brief second to picture myself as part of the Protectorate - maybe in a robe like Eidolon's or Myrddin's, but with maybe a sword at my belt and with martial arts gear beneath the robe... and shook my head. At the rate things were going, the only way I'd be joining the Protectorate was in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. With a sigh of regret, I slid my baseball bat into my inventory and started heading home.

There was definitely something wrong with with my brain, because when I heard the words "Hey, ch**k! Yeah, you! I'm talking to you!", all I could think was - _Oh crap! A random encounter!_


End file.
